Russ Oil-Gas

01 April 2008 - Upstream OnLine - Russia's Gazprom wants to supply a quarter of the world's liquefied natural gas needs by 2030 to diversify away from pipeline gas supplies and become a global energy player, a Gazprom executive said today. Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer, will add some 90 million tonnes of the super-cooled fuel to its production by 2030, Gazprom's deputy head Valery Golubev told reporters at an energy forum in Moscow. Gazprom already supplies a quarter of Europe's gas needs via major pipelines but has no LNG production of its own. It will get the first volumes next year when it launches its Sakhalin-2 project together with Royal Dutch Shell and Japanese outfits. The project in the Pacific waters will ultimately produce 9.6 million tonnes, entitling Gazprom to 4.8 million tonnes of LNG per year. It also wants to launch its landmark Shtokman Barents Sea field in 2013 with first LNG production expected at a few million tonnes. The development of Shtokman is expected to take four phases and over $40 billion which should ultimately produce between 30 million and 40 million tonnes of LNG a year. Together with Sakhalin it would represent around half of Golubev's projections, who did not say where the other volumes would come from, reported Reuters.